Suburban Trash
by Fearful Little Thing
Summary: Sequel to Stick Like A Pig; Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 2427  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: This is the long awaited sequel to Stick (Like A Pig) , set roughly six or so years into the future. And because ff. net does not allow links anymore, I'm afraid you miss out on the illustrations.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

.

* * *

.

Picket fences had nothing on this neighbourhood.

Old fashioned wrought iron fences, Victorian-era housing, petunias lining the window boxes and spacious two car driveways. This was the kind of neighbourhood where little old ladies baked cookies and you could leave your back door unlocked at night. The owners of the houses were the people who lived in them and not investment buyers who shoved renters in to pay off their debts. Until now.

The For Rent sign was a blight on the neighbourhood. It stood defiantly and crookedly hammered into place outside number 56 by the ivy-covered letterbox, a white sign with bright red lettering and the number of an independent realty contractor underneath. It was a sign of the times and how far this good old neighbourhood had fallen. Before you knew it the place would be overrun with the wrong kind of people. The kind that threw loud parties and swore where the kids could hear. The kind who'd bring the property values down and let the house fall into disrepair, the garden suddenly overrun with weeds and the grass two feet tall.

This was the kind of neighbourhood where people raised their kids, where respectable people spent their whole lives until eventually leaving their homes to their grandchildren and moving to a nice assisted living facility.

It was the _perfect_ cover. Kurt smirked to himself as he drove his car slowly past number 56 and its For Rent sign, eyes wicked behind his D&G shades. He tapped the phone number into his phone and pressed dial, foot pressing down against the accelerator. "Yes," he said when someone answered, "I'm calling about the rental on Hartley Drive..."

.

* * *

.

The apartment was a small single bedroom beige block of nothing and Kurt tolerated it only as an intermediary step. He had a credit card sitting in his wallet just begging to buy furniture for a place that could actually fit more than just a single sofa and coffee table. Kurt felt boxed in here, bored and annoyed every time he saw the bare walls and plain carpeting on the floors. He sat on the sofa with his morning coffee because they didn't actually have a dining table yet.

"It was your idea," Puck always reminded him, perfectly at ease in the dingy little box of an apartment, "to move this far out without any savings."

Kurt hated that somehow Puck had managed to take the role of the sensible one when it had come to that decision. True, Kurt could rely on his father's money if he needed to. He just preferred not to. He was twenty three years old, and he should be able to stand on his own two feet. He was, in fact, well on his way to doing just that. Six months ago he had managed to nab himself an excellent job at an interior design company, the sort of job that any design graduate would kill for. (Kurt hadn't needed to, but he'd kept it in mind.) It paid a very decent salary, most of which was currently being injected into a high interest savings account, the last quarter of which was paying off the last of his student loans. They were living off Puck's salary, which was a thought that sometimes made Kurt's eyebrow arch at himself in the mirror. Luckily the other man was never around to see him do it – Puck got up at five in the morning and started work at six, same job he'd been in since high school in just another different location.

It was always easy for Puck to get work. He had experience, he had good references, and he knew how to joke around with the other guys on site to make instant friends.

They were a mismatched pair, everyone always commented on it. When Puck wasn't around to get pissed off at him Kurt would just smile and say that he liked them big and stupid.

Unfortunately the trouble with their different working schedules was that Kurt couldn't find the time to talk to him until a mutual oddly timed lunch hour. Kurt sat behind his desk at the design firm, swatches of fabric pushed to the side with giant files full of paint chips. He had his lunch in front of him, salad and a lightly buttered bread roll, and his phone pressed to his ear.

"I found us a house," he told Puck when the call connected. "56 Hartley, in the middle of a nice suburban community filled with young parents and semi-retired couples."

"Am I meant to think that's good or bad?" Puck asked, voice dry. Kurt could hear the noise from the construction site in the background, muffled by whatever was between Puck and the actual work site.

"You're meant to think it's wonderful and praise me," Kurt replied easily, delicately picking at his salad. "I wanted to talk to you about this at home, but I have an appointment with the realtor after work and won't see you until dinner. Suburbia, darling, is exactly what we need."

"Ok." Puck didn't sound convinced. "What the hell gave you that idea?"

"Hm. Well, I have a few names I'd like to discuss with you. And while I was thinking over those names it occurred to me that the place for us to be was right in the middle of a suburban paradise filled with character references and proof that I plan on being with this company for the long haul."

There was a long pause. Kurt ate two bites of his salad. Eventually Puck replied incredulously; "You want me to work around suburban hell? What the fuck, Kurt."

"It makes perfect sense. I'll explain it to you tonight."

"Yeah, you better."

"If you're really good," Kurt teased, "I'll blow you before dinner."

"And I'll jizz on your face, Princess." Pause. "Fine. Go rent us some prissy big house surrounded by nosy neighbours."

Kurt smiled. "I love you too, Noah." He cooed the words into the receiver before hanging up. Puck would never say it back while at work. In fact, it had taken Kurt two whole years just to get him to say the words at all. He didn't mind. He had his gorgeous, accommodating and understanding boyfriend... who made sure he didn't have to keep any fantasies to himself. He was fulfilled. Mostly.

A better home than their current apartment was a good start. He could work on attaining his dream job after that.

.

* * *

.

Kurt clocked off at four thirty on the dot and was outside 56 Hartley at five minutes to five, just in time to see the realtor pull up in a dark blue sedan. Kurt's own car was a very stylish jeep the size of a tank, perfect for hauling boxes of fabric and throw pillows from location to location. (Puck liked to joke that it was big enough to haul bodies, but Kurt had threatened him with bodily harm if he even got so much as a drop of blood on the upholstery.) He parked the car and got out into the slowly fading sunlight, whipped his sunglasses off and shot the realtor a dazzling smile.

"Mr. Hummel?" She asked. Her smile was much less rehearsed than Kurt's had been. "I'm Valerie Cartwright, it's nice to meet you."

"A pleasure," Kurt replied and shook her hand when it was offered to him. His palms were just as soft as hers, his fingers uncallused. He worked hard to keep then that way, with a dazzling array of moisturisers and scrubs. He had an artist's hands, delicate and full of movement. "You should know," he told the realtor, "that this is really just a formality. I am determined to rent this house, I just need to see the inside so my partner thinks I took at least some time to think about this."

Valerie looked stunned, but pulled herself together after only a momentary pause. "Don't you want to look inside?" she laughed, "just to make sure the house is suitable?"

Kurt had looked the blueprints up already. He nodded at her anyway. "Of course. I may as well see what colour the walls are."

He signed off on the contract just after six thirty, skipping the application process altogether when the realty company learned what his salary was. By the time he actually got home to the apartment it was well after seven, he could smell pizza and knew Puck had ordered in rather than cook for himself.

Kurt shucked his jacket and folded it over one arm, deposited it alongside his bag on the kitchen table and walked into the living room where Puck was seated in front of the TV. "Darling..."

"What did you do?" Puck asked bluntly.

"Nothing. Yet." Kurt took a seat on the couch beside his partner, keeping his distance only because the other man was still dressed in work pants, the legs covered in brick dust and dirt. He reached out a hand to brush his fingers down the back of Puck's shaved head, feeling velvet-textured stubble under his fingers. "I want to talk to you about moving my career forward. I want to talk to you about a new List."

Puck turned his head to look at Kurt, seeing right past the innocent baby-face and the coy smile. He sank down an inch or two against the back of the couch, covering up the thrill that tingled down his spine at the thought of what a new List would entail. They hadn't done anything for months, eight of them to be exact. Frankly Puck thought that was eight months too long, though intellectually he was aware of the wisdom of keeping their bursts of destruction few and far apart.

Plenty of research told him that one of the many ways a serial killer got caught was by getting predictable and by killing enough people to be noticed. There was a set of unspoken rules that Puck followed – rules he'd only broken twice in the years since his first killing, during the time Kurt was in college.

"I'm listening," he said, watching Kurt's face for the telltale flush across his cheeks and the spark that brightened his eyes.

"I want to come at this sideways," Kurt explained, trailing his fingers down across the back of Puck's neck and over his shoulder. "I've observed a wonderfully delicate balance between rival contractors and their parent companies. In the very short time that I've been working at Studio Six I've noticed that if just a few people were to be... made obsolete, then certain positions in these companies would open up. I wouldn't get any of these promotions of course, but I don't expect to. What I want is to get noticed, to be forced to fill in for a missing designer at the last second, to take a supporting position at the design expo later this year."

"So you need me to arrange a few convenient disappearances," Puck supplied, following along and watching Kurt's pupils slowly dilate in his excitement.

"Four," Kurt corrected. "Four disappearances over the course of six months."

"There's a but here, isn't there?"

"But we need to be absolutely and completely free of suspicion."

"And how exactly do we do that?" Puck asked doubtfully, not because he thought they'd had troubles avoiding suspicion, but because he had a feeling that wasn't exactly what Kurt meant.

"We need to be somewhere readily observable at all times," Kurt stated patiently, "we need to be sociable. We may need to entertain, or at least extend the offer. We need to look credible, respectable, we need to send the message that yes I _am_ a raging homosexual but I also have respectability and definite plans to build a career at Studio Six."

"In a nice, respectable neighbourhood," Puck rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I see where this is going. So did you fill in an application yet or do I get a say in this?"

"You get no say," Kurt informed his partner and leaned over delicately, careful not to let his clothes touch Puck's possibly dirt-smeared skin, to press his lips against the other man's cheek. "We're moving in this weekend."

Puck groaned in protest and let his head loll back against the couch cushions. "You're such a fucking bitch."

"Don't worry," Kurt patted his shoulder, "I have enough savings to outfit our new, respectable home _and_ to have everything delivered." He paused thoughtfully, eyeing his partner's arms. "Even if you do look lovely when you lift things."

"Blow me."

"Shower first," Kurt replied primly. He stood, adjusted the set of his clothing. He saw Puck watching him, gaze locked firmly below the belt. Kurt cupped himself through his pants, rubbing with his palm. "You'd better hurry," he advised, "I'm feeling impatient, and I will not wait for you."

Kurt waltzed into the bedroom and closed the door most of the way behind him. He could hear Puck stand up and clomp to the bathroom, heard the shower turn on, and then his partner's voice through the thin walls of the apartment. "You know I'll have to keep going out at night, right? So it doesn't look weird when I go off and kill those guys?"

"I know," Kurt replied, unbuttoning his shirt.

"So what if someone thinks I'm screwing around behind your back?"

"We'll tell anyone who asks that it's none of their business," Kurt said primly. He opened the closet door and looked at himself in the full-length mirror stuck to the inside. He struck a pose, smoothed his hands down his chest, and slowly unbuckled his belt. "Are you naked yet?" he asked Puck.

"Are you?" The reply came, slow and sardonic. A second later Kurt heard the sound of the water change as it hit human flesh instead of tile and glass. "Are you thinking about death, baby?"

Kurt watched his reflection lick its lips and shimmy out of its pants. He didn't answer straight away, just finished undressing between slow caresses to his own body. Once he was completely naked he crossed the small room until he was pressed up against the wall that separated the bedroom from the bathroom. He moaned, loud and purposeful.

And grinned when he got the exact response he wanted. He could hear Puck muttering curses. The shower abruptly turned off. Kurt laughed to himself and waited for the other man to come in from the bathroom, naked and wet, with no intention of giving him any mercy.

Domesticity was bliss.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 2427  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: I'm currently looking for a new beta reader to help me sort out some issues with the last couple of chapters. If you're interested in reading ahead and giving me some much-needed help, please send me a PM.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

.

* * *

.

The moving van showed up on Saturday morning, two days after the 'for rent' sign had been taken down from the property next door. Doug noticed it when he was making breakfast and watched the uniforms moving furniture and boxes back and forth for a while before losing interest. He couldn't see any sign of whoever was going to be their new neighbours (renters, instead of home-owners – Doug would confess to being a little suspicious of people who had no reason to really care about their house); There were only uniforms out there, and just the two moving vans. No other cars or people that he could see.

He shrugged and dismissed it, made his wife a coffee and broke up a squabble between five year old Holly and seven year old Braedon.

He didn't think anything of it until that afternoon when the flashy black jeep pulled up outside number 56 and out stepped the gayest man Doug had ever seen. He wasn't trying to be offensive or anything with that description, but it was the only way to describe the man currently standing out on the sidewalk outside number 56.

Thin, dressed in a lavender shirt and white pants, a scarf knotted about his neck and women's sunglasses perched on his porcelain-pale face. Hair perfectly coiffed. Nails probably manicured.

This guy was the kind of person Doug had only seen in movies, or in that sitcom from a few years back, Will & Grace.

"Hon," Marcia's voice interrupted his musing, "who's that, do we know him?"

"I think he's the renter moving in next door," Doug answered, frowning slightly. He supposed a gay guy would be much more likely to keep the place in good shape than any other renter.

"We should go and say hello later," Marcia told him, sliding an arm around her husband's waist. "To be polite."

"He doesn't exactly look like the type who'd appreciate the neighbours popping by just to be nice..."

"Oh." Marcia clucked her tongue and lightly whacked his arm. "You don't know what he'd appreciate. For all you know he'd love to know who his neighbours are, and maybe get to know some of the people around here."

Marcia was only half way through talking when the second car pulled up, into 56's driveway. This car, Doug noted, was much less swanky than the jeep. It looked like a work car, the sort of thing you'd drive around expecting it to get dirty. He thought he saw a toolbox in the back, the sort carried around by handymen or particularly organised construction workers. For a moment Doug had visions of a stereotypical muscle-man with a 70s porn style moustache.

The man who actually got out of the car half a second later was not what he was expecting. He got the tall and broad-shouldered part right, but the olive-skinned man who stepped out onto the sidewalk looked just like any other brickie or day labourer from any normal construction site. He was even dressed in worn jeans and a plain t-shirt.

"And who is _that_?" Marcia asked, knowing full well that Doug knew only as much as she did. She nudged her husband. "Watch out, honey, you've got some competition. Meow."

"I don't think that guy is competition," Doug pointed out, oddly uncomfortable watching it when the two men met in front of the gate and exchanged a kiss.

"We should say hello," Marcia said, and pulled away from Doug with a grin.

"Marcie," Doug protested, "they haven't even set foot on the property yet. Can't you wait?"

"No," Marcia replied, slipping her feet into shoes. "I think it would be nice if we went and introduced ourselves now."

Doug knew exactly where the children got their precociousness from. And it wasn't from his side of the family. Well, if he didn't follow her she'd only wind up getting too chatty and either scaring them or telling them embarrassing stories about the last street party. Doug sighed to himself and just walked out barefoot after his wife. The kids were playing outside in the back yard anyway, and they'd hear it half way down the street if either of them got into a scrape.

Marcia was already waving and saying a cheerful "Hiii!" by the time Doug got outside, and he stepped out onto the lawn in time to see both men turn, the painfully gay one reaching up to take off his sunglasses.

"I'm Marcia and this is my husband Doug," Marcia introduced them, "we've been wondering who was going to rent this house since the sign first got put up. It's nice to see this place finally being occupied."

"Marcia," the smaller man smiled at her, his voice high and effeminate. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Kurt," he said, reaching out to shake Marcie's hand, "and this is my partner Noah."

"Puck," the other man supplied.

"This is such a nice neighbourhood," Kurt said, obviously used to doing most of the talking, "I feel so lucky that we managed to squeeze in before someone else did."

"It's a good neighbourhood," Doug agreed, "most people around here are pretty friendly."

"So I can see!" Kurt laughed politely.

"If you don't mind," Puck interrupted, taking a step back towards the house, "I'm gonna go start unpacking. Doug. Marcia." That said, Puck turned away and walked straight into the house without looking back or giving any other attempts at politeness.

Kurt just smiled and shook his head ruefully. "You'll have to forgive Noah," he said, tapping his folded-up sunglasses against his collarbone, "he's just peevish because he has the night shift this month and I'm keeping him awake past his bedtime to move boxes. The poor baby."

"Oh no," Marcia assured him, "I understand completely. You should see Doug before his morning coffee, it's like watching an angry, blind bear stumbling around the kitchen." She laughed.

Kurt grinned at her. "Men and caffeine," he joked, "one does not work without the other."

"Oh, and I'll give you three guesses as to which!"

They laughed together this time, and Doug shook his head. Marcia had made a friend. There was no sidestepping embarrassing block party stories now. The conversation came to a natural end after a few more minutes of polite banter and Kurt eventually excused himself to go and start 'supervising'. Marcia followed Doug back into their own house.

"See," she said to him, poking his bicep, "and you were worried that a rental house would attract the wrong kind of people."

.

* * *

.

Doug was sort of expecting the controversy so it didn't come as too much of a shock when, barely a half hour after their short discussion with the new residents of number 56, Janice from 60 had decided to pop over for a chat.

Doug was the one who answered the door, and he managed a relatively polite smile at the horse-faced bottle blonde gossip. "Afternoon, Janice," he greeted her, "I take it you're after Marcie?"

"If she's in," Janice replied sweetly, not too subtly glancing over towards 56 every couple of seconds. "I can wait out here if you like, if you haven't had a chance to clean yet..."

"Don't be silly," Doug said, shaking his head and stepping aside to let her in. If he let her stay out there on the porch she'd only make it obvious that she was spying, and he didn't want to be associated with Janice's nosiness. "Come on in. Marcie's out back keeping an eye on the kids."

Doug walked Janice through the back yard, where Marcie was keeping an eye on Braedon and Holly, then retreated to the living room to watch weekend sport and drink iced tea. He'd given up on alcohol before Braedon was born, in those two awful years that Marcie had almost left him. He had a certificate from AA, and a ban on alcohol in the house. The whole street knew about it, but being a recovered alcoholic was nothing close to gossip.

The kind of gossip Janice was after was obvious. She wanted to know what was up with the two new cars outside 56, whether or not she'd been mistaken about that kiss, and all sorts of other irrelevant information. Who they were, what they did, where they worked, where they had lived before then.

Why she didn't just go over and ask the new neighbours herself was beyond him. Doug wouldn't pretend to know how women thought and operated.

.

* * *

.

Janice was still gossiping in the back yard with Marcia two hours later, and Doug was starting to wonder about his wife's taste in friends. Marcie was a great woman and he loved her to pieces, but how she could stand Janice was a complete mystery to him.

Doug flicked the channel to the five o'clock news, beginning to think about what exactly he should cook for dinner. It was a house rule that he cooked on weekends, while Marcia cooked on weekdays. It worked out nicely given their respective jobs – Doug worked a nine to five as the branch manager of a bank in the next suburb over, while Marcia listed her occupation as 'home maker' and sometimes tooled little craft projects to keep herself busy.

The doorbell interrupted Doug's musings on dinner and he sighed and levered himself out of his chair to answer the door. He hoped it wasn't Karen from across the road come to join in on the gossiping outside. He got his wish, in a roundabout sort of way, when he opened the door on his new neighbour.

"Hello," Kurt greeted him, "I'm sorry to impose, but I was wondering if you had a can opener I could borrow. Ours seems to have gone missing somewhere between here and downtown."

"That's no problem," Doug replied politely, and waved the other man into the house. "I'll just see if I can find it for you."

"Thank you." Kurt stated. He stepped delicately inside and looked around, taking in the walls covered in family portraits and one of a kind oil paintings forwarded on by Marcia's mother. The whole house was done in shades of warm beige, yellow and white. A set of happy colours for a happy home. Kurt nodded. "You have a lovely house, Doug. I must say I'm impressed with this colour scheme."

Doug had no idea what to say to that. "You'll have to tell Marcie," he said, rummaging through the kitchen drawers, "she makes all the executive decisions on the house."

"I will," Kurt replied, stopping to examine one of the oil paintings on the wall. "Now _this_ is an interesting piece. I could definitely use this artist."

"Are you in art?" Doug asked, thinking that it wouldn't be too far off the mark. He had visions of the younger man as an art gallery's administrator, or curator, or whatever they were called. He looked young for the job, but it fit him and his fancy lavender shirt.

"Interior design," Kurt replied, "at the moment."

So Kurt was in interior design and his partner was obviously a labourer. Doug hadn't even been gossiping and already he knew more about their neighbours than Janice did. It gave him an odd sense of satisfaction. He found the can opener and held it out towards the other man. "There you go," he said, "one can opener."

Delicate, artistic fingers took the can opener, and Kurt smiled at him. "Thank you so much, Doug. I promise I'll have it back as quick as can be."

.

* * *

.

"I love having neighbours," Kurt said as he breezed into the half-unpacked kitchen, can opener in hand. He set the gadget down on top of the marble bench top and continued turned to Noah, who sat at their brand new kitchen table, half-asleep and grumpy. "Pay up," Kurt announced, pointedly placing a hand down on the bench near the can opener, "I win."

"That doesn't count," Puck said. "It's a can opener."

"We bet that I couldn't borrow something only hours after moving in," Kurt corrected. "You never specified that it had to be a cup of sugar. Pay up."

"I fucking hate you."

"You love me to pieces," Kurt corrected, watching Puck stand and take off his t-shirt.

.

* * *

.

There were no curtains on the bedroom windows yet and Puck had never been a big believer in turning out the lights. He was very visual and so was Kurt. He liked being able to see what he was doing, and who he was doing, liked being able to see the shining trail of saliva left behind by his tongue against his lover's thigh.

Kurt pushed Puck down flat against the mattress, face down, hips propped up by a pair of cushions stacked underneath him. He ran his hands over Puck's back, thumbs brushing the line of his spine, until both hands were cupping his lover's ass, spreading the cheeks apart.

"Mmph," Puck muttered against the bedcovers, head pillowed by his own arms. "Pervert."

"Villain," Kurt replied in a soft coo, rubbing his thumb over the entrance to his lover's body.

"Slut," Puck murmured. "Come on, I'm leaving for work in an hour."

.

* * *

.

Marcia went to close the bedroom curtains and stopped, suddenly blushing, her eyes wide.

"What?" Doug asked, already dressed in pyjamas, mouth still filled with the taste of toothpaste. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Marcia said, and quickly snapped the curtains shut.

Suspicious and frowning, Doug walked across the room to peek out through a tiny gap between the curtains. He saw the trouble immediately with how their bedroom window lined up with one of the windows decorating 56's master bedroom. Their windows were curtainless, free of even a sheer lace covering to blur out the details of the inside. The light was on, giving a clear visual of everything going on inside – including the tanned, muscular body stretched out over the king sized bed and the pale, lithe form above it.

Doug turned away from the window, uncomfortable and ill. "Marcie..."

"The kids are asleep," Marcia assured him, her face still red. "Holly's room is on the other side of the house. Doug..."

"Maybe we could get them some curtains. As a housewarming gift."

Curtains firmly closed, Doug turned off the bedroom light. He was in bed, Marcia already asleep beside him, when he heard the faint rumbling roar of the work truck from next door. Light flashed briefly over the bedroom curtains, disappearing when the truck rumbled off down the road.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 2427  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: This chapter you get to have a couple of hints to do with those missing six years between this story and the first.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

.

* * *

.

Kurt's eyes snapped open in the middle of the night, the glow from the alarm clock telling him that it was just after four in the morning. He could hear the front door shut in the strange suburban silence, he could track the heavy footsteps even through the thick walls – to the foyer where a pair of steel cap boots were dropped one by one to the floor.

Kurt closed his eyes again and snuggled against his pillow, naked under the blanket draped lazily over his waist. He sighed against the smooth cotton as he listened to the muffled movements as they passed through the hallway and into the bathroom. He opened his eyes again when he felt the mattress dip and found himself looking into Puck's face.

Kurt smiled, lips pressed against his cheekbone, and he rolled onto his side to look at his boyfriend. "Good morning," he teased.

"Good night," Puck replied, sliding his body under the blanket.

"How was work?"

"Dark," Puck replied, stretching. He settled stretched out on his back on his side of the bed, hands tucked behind his head under the pillow. Kurt could smell him, a manly scent of sweat, antiperspirant and dirt – he hadn't showered. "Full of tools."

"I want you to have breakfast with me," Kurt said, sliding several inches over until his body was brushing Puck's side and their thighs were pasted together. "I'll make pancakes."

"Bribery," Puck muttered, eyes closed.

"Noah..."

"Wake me up when it's ready," Puck replied, and snaked an arm around Kurt's shoulders. "And I'm going back to sleep after."

Kurt woke up at seven in the morning only because the sun was streaming in through the curtainless bedroom windows. He crinkled his nose and groaned softly, baffled by how exactly Puck could sleep with a sunbeam right across his face like that. Kurt thought about kicking him awake to make him suffer the same way he was being forced to suffer, but thought better of it when he imagined what Puck could do (or refuse to do) when he was pissed off and tired.

Instead Kurt rolled out of bed and found a dressing gown to throw on while he gathered his clothes for the day and retreated to the bathroom. He loved this bathroom. It was attached to the master bedroom by a door, and yet wasn't considered the en suite. It was tiled in black and green, an unusual colour choice for a house like this, spacious, and sported a two person tub as well as a separate shower stall and a generously sized mirror above the hand basin.

Kurt dropped his dressing gown and turned on the shower, humming in appreciation of the excellent water pressure. The rent on this place was ridiculous, but worth every cent. He showered in a bliss of hot, steamy water and dried off on a new fluffy black bath sheet bought to match the decor. Half an hour of morning routine later and he was standing barefoot in the kitchen in slacks and a clean white button-down shirt. He made the pancakes with chocolate chips, stacked several onto a plate, and tiptoed into the bedroom to wake up his boyfriend.

He knew from experience that cooing Noah's name into his ear wouldn't do a thing. There were only reliable two ways to wake Puck, and Kurt had been shocked to discover that Puck had the ability to sometimes sleep through morning blowjobs. He jabbed his fingers sharply into Puck's side just below his ribs, snapping; "Wake up!"

He had learned that one from Puck's mother, of all people.

The reaction was still less than spectacular. Puck stretched, groaned, and cracked his eyes open against the sunlight to squint up at Kurt. "S'breakfast ready?"

"I made pancakes," Kurt confirmed. He leaned over and pecked his boyfriend's forehead, then stood properly and sashayed out of the room. He paused in the doorway to spare a glance at the bare windows. "Hurry up," he said, "before they get cold."

Puck groaned and rolled over under the blanket until he was on the edge of the bed. He sat up, rubbed a hand over his shaved head, and yawned. He'd stripped down to his boxers before getting into bed, and the morning sun made his olive skin seem more golden tanned than usual. He stretched, hands above his head, lazily popping the kinks out of his back before he sloped over to the almost-bare chest of drawers that was supposed to contain his clothes. He drew out a t-shirt, noted with some distaste that it was new and he didn't remember buying it; He pulled it on anyway, glad that it was only a solid coloured tee.

He turned to leave the bedroom and caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. Puck glanced back at the windows and noticed the curtains in the house next door still swinging.

"Neighbours were perving on me," he announced when he entered the kitchen.

"Yes," Kurt replied, "I figured."

Puck sat down at the table and waited. Within moments Kurt had set a plate of pancakes down in front of him, alongside a glass of pulpy orange juice and a set of shiny new utensils. "New?" he asked, raising his fork. Kurt gave him a look and Puck rolled his eyes. "So what isn't new?" he asked dryly. "Are you trying to buy us a life or what?"

"Eat your pancakes, darling."

"You can't buy normal," Puck pointed out, stabbing the fluffy pancakes on his plate with his knife and fork. "I thought you knew better than that. If this is another one of your '_who-am-I, oh god I'm a creepy little bitch_' meltdowns you better tell me right the fuck now. Cause the last one ended so well."

"I'm not having a meltdown," Kurt sighed, putting down his utensils. He picked up his coffee cup instead and frowned at Puck over the top of it. Kurt held the cup like an accessory, as if coffee were a fashion statement just as much as his clothes were. "I'm having a spree. I can't believe I lived in that tiny little box for months on end without tearing my hair out. Now that I have the space to do what I want, I will do what I want."

"Whatever, Picasso," Puck replied around a mouthful of melted chocolate and pancake. "Just don't turn this house into some kind of fluffy, prissy, velour paradise."

"I'm keeping it tasteful. In case you hadn't noticed."

"Tastefully nude."

Kurt coloured a little, and put his coffee cup down. He flicked his tongue out to catch a drop of espresso from the corner of his lips. "Tasteful," he said.

"Don't even bother trying," Puck told him, pointing his fork at Kurt for emphasis. "I know what you did there. What you're doing with these dumb locals. I know you, and I get it. But now you've let them all know what a class-A stud I am can you put up some curtains already?"

Sometimes Kurt hated that he'd let Puck get so close, close enough to know so much about him. Most of the time it was nice to know he never had to hide anything. Kurt sighed, caught. His fingers traced over the lip of his coffee cup. "Well," he said, "I can see there's no arguing with you."

"Got that right."

"I wanted to give you a name before I went to work," Kurt said, changing the subject. "Robert Cripley."

"Yeah?" Puck asked, suddenly looking much more awake, as if he'd just been injected with a direct shot of caffeine.

"I copied his information onto the flash drive on the vanity by my moisturiser." Kurt sipped his coffee again, and checked his watch. He had yet to pick an appropriate wall clock for the kitchen. "It has everything that's on his HR file to date, and don't ask me how I got my hands on all of that."

"I'm sure it was devious and sexy."

"Point is," Kurt said, "it should give you more than enough for a starting point."

He stood and carried his empty plate to the sink. The house didn't have a dishwasher, but with just the two of them they didn't accrue much of a mess in plates and cups anyway. Kurt placed his dishes into the sink and walked back around the table to give his boyfriend a kiss that tasted like chocolate chip pancakes.

"I have to get ready for work, darling."

"It's Sunday."

"I know." Kurt sighed dramatically. "Decor waits for no man. Plus, weekend rates are to die for."

"Knock 'em dead, baby," Puck said, and managed to grab Kurt's ass before he darted out of reach. They passed each other again in the hallway after Kurt had finished getting properly dressed, Puck clearly on his way back to bed. Kurt let himself be grabbed and pushed up against the wall for a proper goodbye kiss, remembering everything he loved about the other man as Puck's hands closed over his wrists.

"Remember the curtains," Puck told him.

"I love you," Kurt replied, licking his lips.

"I love you too." Puck leaned in for another, softer kiss, then let Kurt away from the wall. "Kinky bitch."

.

* * *

.

Puck woke up at four in the afternoon and didn't need to think about leaving for work until eight at night. Somehow, while he was sleeping, curtains had made their way onto the frames of the bedroom windows. They were a heavy fabric, chocolate brown and perfect for blocking out the sunlight. Puck approved of them, they suited his masculinity while still catering to Kurt's need for style.

He got up at his own pace this time, rolling out of bed after five minutes just spent gathering his thoughts together and making sure he was properly awake.

Puck's first stop after getting out of bed was the bathroom. He took a long, hot shower free from Kurt-related interruptions or pestering and dried himself off thoroughly while standing naked in the middle of the tiled floor. He let the towel drop to the floor, forgotten, and walked back out into the bedroom without dressing.

Still naked, he found the flash drive Kurt had left for him and dug out the laptop he'd bought specifically for planning. He only used it for looking up information relevant to his less than legal habits, floor plans of buildings, maps of local and not-so-local areas, specifications for various tools or prices of things he might need to buy in order to pull it off. He put it all on the one laptop so it could be gotten rid of easily if he needed to.

One swipe with a powerful enough magnet and it would all be gone. No proof, no mess, no fuss.

Puck sat down on the edge of the bed, laptop balanced on his thighs, and booted up the computer. He waited for the login scripts to finish and the desktop to flash up, then inserted the drive. He had to smile at the name Kurt had assigned it, 'Edify'. After six years with the same frustratingly wordy boyfriend (give or take, not including that year and a half while Kurt was at college) Puck's vocabulary had expanded enough that he knew a play on words when he saw it.

Robert Cripley was 37 years old, a divorce lawyer, and the son in law of the man who owned and operated Désigne, Studio Six's main competition. Puck frowned as he read the profile, wondering what exactly Kurt was up to here. As far as he knew, Kurt had no plans to jump ship and attempt to join up with another company, so creating a vacuum made little sense to him.

"Not my problem," Puck told himself, instead making a note of Cripley's address and earmarking the street for a drive by. He'd need to research the neighbourhood and find out if Cripley had any sort of routine.

Puck frowned at the screen, thinking about what he knew about the area. Cities were simultaneously harder and yet easier to make people disappear in. There were fewer places you could go for absolute solitude, fewer places to dump a body where it wouldn't be found for a few weeks... But at the same time there was so much going on that people were less likely to look twice at something bad. They didn't want to get involved, so most of the time if they heard a noise they wouldn't follow up on it.

He had an advantage here, the same advantage he always had on new or half-finished building sites. It wasn't weird for a guy like him, for a truck like his, to drive around with random crap in the back. He could haul a tarp, a shovel, cans of bleach or gasoline or bags of cement and it was completely normal.

The building site was a good idea actually, he mused. Plenty of open holes soon to be covered in cement, foundations being set, steel bars to be set in concrete columns... He loved how much easier it was to get rid of a body now that he was older. He would have to do some thinking, some calculations about time, and how to engineer it so that he could get the body encased in concrete without anyone noticing.

Puck was already starting to think of Robert Cripley as deceased. After all, with Puck's sights set on him that was what he was. Mr. Cripley just didn't know it yet.

He spent the next hour or so unpacking the few things that Kurt had left boxed up, washing the dishes left in the sink, and hauling the last few boxes into the shed out in the garden. He was going to have to pick up a lawn mower from somewhere, he realised. Unless Kurt wanted to throw fifty a week into lawn care.

Puck left for an hour then, intending to go out and get some essential grocery shopping done as well as refilling some less essential supplies. He would be home for dinner with Kurt, and then need to leave almost immediately afterwards. When he came back, bottles of bleach hidden under the seat of his truck and groceries on the passenger seat, Kurt's jeep was already parked in the driveway.

The door was unlocked, which made it considerably easier to get inside with both arms full of grocery bags. The kitchen light was on. Puck could hear the muffled sounds of laughter and conversation. He frowned slightly as he clomped to the kitchen – he couldn't remember any of Kurt's friends being invited over for any kind of housewarming, if that was what this was. He entered the kitchen and was proved right. The woman sitting at the kitchen table, wineglass in hand, was not one of Kurt's friends. It was the neighbour from next door.

"Noah!" Kurt greeted him, two glasses in and (to gather from the items currently laid out on the bench) clearly planning on making omelettes for dinner. "Darling. Say hi to Marcie. She was nice enough to bring over a bottle of very lovely wine."

Puck nodded. "Marcia," he greeted her, and cleared space on the bench with an elbow so he could put the shopping down. He turned around and leaned casually against the counter. "If he winds up with a hangover I know who to blame."

Marcia beamed at him, at least a little bit tipsy; "Don't be silly," she said, "Kurt can hold his wine!"

"You don't live with him," Puck quipped.

"You're just jealous," Kurt announced, a small smirk on his lips. One that Puck recognised immediately as his '_I'm being ironic_' smirk. "That I have made a friend in our new neighbours and you have not."

"I think I'll live," Puck replied.

"Doug is reserved," Marcia cut in, unaware of any subtext passing between the two men. "But he is a good man. He'd be a good friend. You just need to give him a little time to get over himself."

Puck turned away and started unpacking the groceries. "Noah isn't the kind of guy who has a lot of close friends," Kurt answered for him, sipping from his wineglass. "He keeps in touch with a few friends back in our home town, but the rest of them are just drinking buddies."

Marcia shook her head. "Some people are just more private than others."

Puck had to wonder what exactly she thought she was going to achieve here. From the outside it looked as if Kurt was a cheerful, open, social-butterfly type. He looked like the kind of guy who would immediately induct you into his circle of equally glamorous friends and start sharing secrets over cocktails and spritzers. He could keep up the charade for years at a time, but the reality was that nobody was as close to Kurt as they thought they were. Mercedes might have been once, before college separated them, but nobody – not even Kurt's father – knew him the way they thought they did. There was always at least one very large and looming secret hidden behind Kurt's friendly, knowing smiles. Puck was the only one who knew what that was.

He slid a box of rice crackers into the pantry and wondered if Marcia would be so keen to have drinks at their dinner table if she knew Kurt had asked him to kill someone for him just that same morning.

Suburban housewives didn't really seem like the type... But then again, neither had Kurt.

Marcia left when the wine bottle was empty, leaving Kurt to cook dinner which he insisted that he could do by himself (I only had two and a half glasses of wine, Noah. Now shut up) without burning the house down. Puck only believed him because he'd seen Kurt do far more complicated things while tipsy. The omelettes, like most everything Kurt set his mind to, were perfect down to the last detail.

Puck wolfed his in under two minutes, kissed Kurt on the cheek, then announced that he was running late and bounded out to his truck.

"Don't wait up for me, babe," Puck called over his shoulder.

"Don't trip and break your neck," Kurt replied. "You know I can't replace you."

Despite his claim that he was running late, Puck actually got to the site early. He spent the spare time walking around the site, giving the entire area a quick look over for potential drop-points for a body. Parking in the employee lot was out, obviously. He eyed the fence thoughtfully. It was a rental fence, aluminium pipe and chicken wire squares. Six foot by six, sitting on top of weighted plastic struts and held together by bolted couplings. Easy to put together and easy to take apart.

It would be easy enough to open up a section of the fence big enough for a person to slip through.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 2332  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: This was the chapter I decided that yes, they do make bets like that all the time.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

.

* * *

.

Normally the Thursday morning headlines were dull community or sports pieces, political news, the sorts of things only vaguely relevant to most people's interests. Normally you didn't buy the paper on a Thursday for the headlines. This Thursday was different. Emblazoned across the top of the page were the words 'Local Businessman Missing', right next to a recent photograph of a smiling thirty-something year old man.

According to the article, local man Robert Cripley had been reported missing by his wife, after he hadn't come home in two days. A search of his office revealed nothing, but Cripley's car had been found parked on the outskirts of town near the interstate, along with his wallet and keys. At present the evidence pointed to foul play, but there were no suspects at this time.

Doug shook his head at the paper, frowning as he read the article the full way through. He was on his second coffee of the morning, dressed and ready to head off to work, and already the media was trying to sell him a world full of bad news. The article didn't make you read between the lines to figure out that nobody held much hope for Cripley turning up alive.

"It's such a shame," Marcia said, clucking her tongue.

Doug looked up from the paper and across at his wife, who was buttering toast at the counter, dressed in a sensible skirt, blouse, and fluffy bunny slippers. "What's a shame?" Doug asked, thinking that she might mean the newspaper headlines.

"Well they've been here for nearly three weeks and we still hardly know them," Marcia replied, turning around to look at her husband, a piece of buttered toast held in her hand. "They hardly ever mix with the rest of the neighbours. Remember when we first moved here? We were on first names with the whole street in under a week."

Doug sighed. He glanced to the left, in the direction of 56. "Maybe they're just private people, Marcie. Not everyone likes to socialise so much. Anyway, you're on a first name basis aren't you?"

"_I_ am," Marcia agreed. "But I seem to be the only one." She looked thoughtful, tapping a corner of her toast against her mouth. "You know, maybe it's all about timing. Janice told me she went over with a pie the other day but nobody answered."

"Maybe they weren't home."

"Well there is that, but the truck was parked right there in the driveway." Marcia looked even more thoughtful. "Maybe I should ask Kurt if his partner is a deep sleeper. He might not have heard her."

"Or he knew better than to let Janice in without a good line of defence," Doug suggested. He folded up the paper and set it down by his coffee cup. "You know what she's like. She's a nice woman but she could talk the ear off a statue."

"I was thinking..."

Doug waited patiently for Marcia to continue, adding in a subtle glance at his watch.

"You know that barbecue we were planning on having on the sixth?" Marcia paused, and smiled. "I think we should make it a get to know you barbecue. We'll send out invites to everyone on the street, B-Y-O drinks, and give everyone a chance to get to know our new neighbours."

Doug shook his head. "I have an argument for that," he told his wife, "but I need to get going if I'm going to be at work on time." He stood and crossed the kitchen to kiss her on the cheek. "I'll just say goodbye to the kids..."

"It's ok," Marcia told him, walking behind him into the living room where Holly and Braedon were eating their cereal in front of the TV. "I know you're not entirely comfortable with the fact that our neighbours are gay. But really, Doug. They're a couple. It's not like they're going to be checking you out."

"Marcie," Doug replied, and kissed Holly's forehead, "I'm not a homophobe."

"What's a homophone?" Holly asked, looking perplexed.

"You're fielding that one," Marcia informed her husband.

Doug left for work without having managed to express his opinion on why exactly a get to know you barbecue was a bad idea. The truth was that the couple in 56 did make him uncomfortable, but he was sure it wasn't for the reason that Marcia thought. Doug was an enlightened, twenty-first century male. He watched Queer Eye and still sometimes went to support meetings at AA, where he interacted with a cross-section of society that spanned a vast range of race, age, and socio-economic status. He wasn't uncomfortable because the couple in 56 happened to be a pair of homosexual lovers.

He was uncomfortable because he kept getting the feeling that at least one of the men in 56 really didn't want anything to do with the rest of the people who lived on Hartley.

.

* * *

.

Kurt had been one of the first people to know about Robert Cripley's disappearance. In fact, he was the second person ever to be informed of it – and straight from the source. One quick phone call after midnight from the side of the road, cars passing by to distort the sound of Puck's voice, and Kurt had snuggled in under the blankets in their bed to wait until his boyfriend got home. He had spent the next hour waiting patiently, and the hour after that squirming around under the blankets until he finally gave up and got out of bed. He had paced around, stealing impatient glances at whatever timepiece happened to be close by. Puck had finally made it home just before three in the morning, only to be jumped on as soon as the front door was closed behind him.

Kurt woke up later that morning thoroughly regretting his measly three hours of sleep and had dragged himself out to the kitchen for caffeination, resenting his boyfriend for having the foresight to have arranged a day off. Kurt still needed to go in to work. He smoothed ivory foundation over his face to hide the circles under his eyes, perched a pair of expensive sunglasses on his nose, and pumped himself full of coffee.

He spent the day in a stupor, joked about partying too late, and left early. Kurt flopped onto the couch and fell asleep in front of Bewitched, only to wake up an hour later to a plate of French toast and a very thorough massage.

"Mm," Kurt purred, leaning back into the hands that rubbed their way down his back, "I have the best boyfriend in the world."

"Don't think you don't owe me," Puck replied. He kissed the back of Kurt's neck.

"The world, darling," Kurt said. "And so much more."

It took two days for the story to hit the newspapers, and by that time Kurt was very much recovered from his sleepless night at the beginning of the week. He heard the news in the morning at work and expressed only moderate concern – the sort that was appropriate coming from someone who knew of the man but had never met him, and had never said more than two words to the man's father. He chipped in ten dollars for a bouquet to go to the father. An act of kindness that he managed to suggest in a way that made it sound like another designer's idea and not his.

Kurt had a feeling that an expensive and beautiful wreath of flowers being delivered to Matthew Cripley's office would be one more straw for the camel's back. The breaking point would be, of course, when he realised he was never getting to see his son again. Kurt sat back to wait patiently for that day. He didn't much care if it took days, or weeks, or even a couple of months.

His plan wasn't time-sensitive. He had all of the time in the world.

When Kurt got home that afternoon Puck's truck was already parked outside the house by the curb, leaving the driveway for Kurt's jeep. Feeling exceptionally chipper after a day of nothing but good news, Kurt shouldered his bag and hopped out of the car with a smile. The house was really starting to feel like a real home. As much as he was sure Puck would deny it, he was also sure that the other man was feeling the same way.

Kurt climbed the three steps up to the front porch and was just about to open the front door when a voice calling his name made him stop. He turned to see Marcia from next door standing by the short fence that divided their properties, waving at him. Kurt smiled at her and nodded. "Marcia," he greeted her pleasantly, having decided that he liked her enough to possibly adopt her as a second-tier friend. The kind he could gossip with and go on shopping trips with, not the kind he shared any significant bond with. "What are you doing outside with no shoes on? You'll ruin your skin that way."

"Psh," Marcia responded, and laughed. "If a little grass and dirt ruins your skin then you have a problem."

Kurt moved to lean against the porch railing. "I always have a problem," he told her primly. "It's such a tragedy being so attractive. I really have no idea how I cope."

"I'm sure it affects you deeply and terribly," Marcia nodded. "But," she said, holding up a finger. "I'm hoping you can put aside your tragic beauty for a while this weekend and come over on Saturday for a barbecue. Half the street is going to be there, and we'd love to have you and Noah as well."

"A barbecue?" Kurt repeated thoughtfully. He had picked this neighbourhood for the kind where everyone knew each other's names. It wouldn't hurt, he thought, to have more than one good character reference under his belt. "What time?"

"Oh, just come over any time in the afternoon. It's going to be at our house in the back yard, so you can show up whenever you like. It's going to be BYO if you want anything alcoholic to drink," Marcia added, "otherwise there will be soda and juice for the kids."

"I'll have to bring something nice for dessert," Kurt announced, thinking of the price of large cakes and not of making anything himself, "since you're the one hosting."

"You don't have to do that," Marcia assured him, though he knew a dessert wouldn't be turned away if he showed up with one. "Just bring your sweet self and your lovely partner and we'll take care of the rest."

"I'll let Noah know not to make any plans," Kurt agreed. He waved a goodbye to his neighbour and unlocked the front door. By the time he closed the door behind him Marcia was already headed back inside to her own house. He found Puck sitting in front of the TV, beer in hand, looking very much like a typical, average American male. The show that was playing had something to do with from the ground up renovations, which was no doubt considered very masculine.

Kurt dropped his bag on the kitchen counter. He slipped off his jacket, and disappeared into the bedroom to change into something a little more comfortable for around the house. He returned to the living room in one of Puck's shirts and a pair of ass-hugging jeans.

Puck took one look at him and said: "No."

Kurt pursed his lips, if only to bend down and kiss his boyfriend's lips, blocking the TV screen. "I haven't said a thing. You have no idea what I want."

"I know you want something," Puck responded. He tried looking around Kurt, and gave up after a few short seconds when it became clear that the other man wasn't going to move. Instead Puck turned his hazel eyes back to Kurt's face and arched an eyebrow. "Is it couch-sex?"

"No," Kurt said, climbing into Puck's lap and wrapping his arms around the other man's neck. "But if you're lucky I may change my mind on that."

Puck's hands settled on Kurt's hips. "So what is it?"

Kurt smiled. He leaned forward and kissed Puck again. He made it slow and sensual, slipping his tongue out to flick against the other man's lips. By the time the kiss ended one of Puck's hands had migrated to Kurt's ass, and the other had crept up to cup the back of his head. Kurt pressed another quick kiss to his boyfriend's mouth, then told him; "We've been invited to a barbecue on Saturday."

Puck groaned and let his head fall back against the back of the couch.

"They'll have hamburgers," Kurt wheedled, running his hands over Puck's shaved head. "I hear that's traditional fare for a barbecue, isn't it? Lots of red meat, a little salad, large quantities of beer... which we will have to bring ourselves."

"They're a bunch of nosy bitches," Puck protested.

"I'm not above bribing you with couch sex and blowjobs." Kurt raised his eyebrows pointedly and rolled his hips deliberately forward against the other man.

"Can I start a fight?" Puck asked, hands wandering up under the t-shirt that fit him perfectly but that hung off Kurt's frame with plenty of room to spare. Kurt knew he wasn't serious (or at least wouldn't do it, even if he _was_ serious). Instead of answering he arched his back and took the shirt off, leaving him sitting in Puck's lap wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. Puck leaned forward to kiss the pale skin laid bare in front of him. "I give even odds," he said, "for some broad hitting on me in front of you, or some douche trotting out the 'f' word."

"Fifty on you actually enjoying yourself."

Puck chuckled against Kurt's collarbone. "I'll take that bet," he said, and got to work sucking a mark into pale skin.


	5. Chapter 5

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 3116  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: You're going to get slices of two very different pies. And, as it turns out, this story is less sexually explicit than the first. Go figure.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

.

* * *

.

Saturday afternoon was bright and cheerful, the few fluffy white clouds hanging in the sky looked as if they had been placed there on purpose just for the pleasure of looking for shapes. The back yard belonging to 54 was abuzz in conversation and the sizzle of meat atop a very expensive barbecue. The neighbourhood children, all between the ages of six and eleven, ran amuck and underfoot – the sole exception the eight month old Lucy, who remained in her walker by her mother's side.

Kurt breezed in at a fashionably late two o'clock in the afternoon, a bottle of wine in one hand and a wineglass in the other, dressed in 'picnic clothes' that had no business being anywhere near children or grass. Puck followed behind him with a six pack of strongbow, a rather large cake, and an air of 'reluctant husband being dragged to a garden party'. The cluster of females currently taking up the patio furniture recognised the look immediately and hid smiles. Some with more success than others.

"Hi!" Marcia greeted them, standing to take the cake from Puck so she could place it at the table with the rest of the food. "So glad you made it. We were beginning to think you weren't coming! Pull up a chair, hun. Make yourselves at home."

Kurt smiled and somehow found a spare lawn chair to drag across to the circle of ladies. He sat down, balanced his empty wineglass on one knee, and uncorked the bottle. "I'm afraid I got caught up icing the cake," Kurt said, pouring himself a glass of sparkling white. "Perfectionism is as perfectionism does."

Puck rolled his eyes. "He's a liar," he told the women, "don't believe a word he says." He patted Kurt's shoulder with a hand, then nodded to the table. "Ladies," he said, and left for the group of men standing around the barbecue. If he didn't at least make an attempt at socialising then no doubt Kurt would get pissy at him and go off on another fantastically long-winded rant about social culture and not looking like the neighbourhood psychopath. The fact that Puck actually was the neighbourhood psychopath would not win him that argument.

Kurt shook his head and waited until Puck was out of earshot before he stated; "Men."

A soft ripple of laughter swished its way through the group of women and Kurt was in. He was the fascinating, glamorous newcomer and the fact that he happened to be a gay man was inconsequential.

Puck, meanwhile, situated himself near the barbecue where the smell of sizzling meat was the strongest. He cracked open a bottle of the cider he'd brought along and took a long, casual swig. He was good at this, if sometimes reluctant. Normal, average men were easy to get along with. Especially when they were discussing the extension that the grey-haired man from 52 was planning on adding to his house.

Puck waited for an opening in the conversation and stepped naturally into it with a casual; "You don't want to pay full price for that. I know a guy who can get it for forty bucks, no in-store markup."

"That's right," the grey-haired man said, "I heard you were in construction. The wife," he added, when Puck raised an eyebrow. "You know how women talk."

"Or maybe you don't," a pudgy, balding guy in a Hawaiian shirt added.

"I know how women talk," Puck replied. "They don't talk half as much as my partner."

"Ok guys," Doug started, holding up his tongs and pointing to each man in turn. "This is Harry, Jonah, Roger, and Grady. Guys, this is Puck."

The names were so stupidly normal that Puck felt like raising his eyebrows and asking whether this wasn't the set for some light-hearted neighbourhood sitcom. He looked at each man in turn – the two that had spoken before were Harry with the grey hair and Grady with the Hawaiian shirt. Jonah was an old man who looked like he hardly talked at all and Roger was another average-looking man about Doug's age. Puck didn't fail to notice that he was clearly the youngest man there.

"Puck?" Grady repeated incredulously. "Your parents named you that? I don't believe it."

"Smart man," Puck replied, and raised his cider in a mock salute, "it's been Puck since junior high, but my driver's licence says different. Noah Puckerman," he stated, and smiled, "but if you call me that I'm going to have to kill you."

There was a nervous sort of titter and the very brief moment of tension passed.

"If you don't mind me saying," Roger piped up, a curious note to his voice that made Puck think he was actually serious and not trying to be insulting, "you don't strike me as being, you know, queer."

"Yeah," Grady agreed, and even Harry nodded. "You're such a normal kind of guy, Puck."

"And...?" Puck asked, though he was sure he already knew where this was going. And from the too polite 'my friends are embarrassing me' face that Doug was pulling, the other man knew it too.

"And it makes you wonder," Grady continued. "How come you're –"

"With a guy," Puck finished, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder in the direction of the gossiping circle of ladies and Kurt. "And not with some leggy twenty-something blonde with a killer rack, talking about kids and a mortgage?"

"Not necessarily a blonde," Grady chuckled. "But you get the idea."

Puck smiled and shrugged. "Maybe I would be if things had gone differently."

"What things?" Harry asked. "Come on," he pressed. "You moved in three weeks ago and we haven't heard nothing about you."

"How's this," Grady offered, "you tell us how you wound up with Dorothy over there and we'll tell you about the time Doug and Brian – that's the guy who lived in 56 before it sold – decided to see how many roofing tiles they could break using nothing but body parts."

Doug groaned. "Jesus. That was five years ago. Maybe six."

"Four. Definitely four," Roger said, "Marcie had to ask Karen and me to look after your kids while she drove you to the emergency room."

"So what do you say?" Harry grinned. "Tell us how you met and we'll tell you about the roofing tiles."

Puck took a swig of his cider as he pretended to consider. He had them hooked, he figured. After this it would be beers with the boys on Saturdays and Kurt couldn't complain that he was the antisocial spanner in the cogs of his brilliant career-changing plan. "I guess," Puck began, "it all started with that stupid Glee club, and the Lima killer..."

"The Lima killer?" Doug asked, clearly surprised. Enough so that the sausages on the barbecue were starting to burn as he frowned at the younger man.

Puck nodded. "Yup. Back in 2010 there was this rash of murders in the town of Lima, Ohio. That's where we grew up, me and Kurt. And up until those murders we pretty much hated each other. Actually," Puck chuckled to himself, "me and a bunch of other kids used to toss him into a dumpster at least twice a week."

"And the murders changed that?" Grady asked, sceptical.

"No. The Glee club changed that," Puck said, aware of how ridiculous the story was already. He grinned. "My friend Finn joined first. I thought it was stupid at first, then I wound up joining a few weeks later. I got to know Kurt through the club, as well as all these other kids I used to think were a bunch of weirdos and geeks. So we were sort-of friends, and _then_ the murders happened. The Lima killer went after a specific kind of guy, the tough, sporty type. Guys pretty much just like me. You can look it up – six kids went missing, four in my year. It took them months to find all the bodies and for a while everyone was shit-scared wondering who was going to be next."

"I remember the news," Jonah said, speaking for the first time since Puck had joined them. He nodded. "Six boys all missing from a small town in Ohio. They never did find that killer."

"Exactly," Puck agreed, raising his cider in thanks. "So there was this killer on the loose and everyone freaking out, and I fit the exact profile of the guys this killer liked to hit. Everyone was worried and fussing and generally being a pain in the ass. Except for Kurt. We hit it off, turned out we had a few things in common, and before I knew it I suddenly had a boyfriend."

"And you've been together ever since?" The query came from Harry, who glanced over at the cluster of women with a dubious look.

Puck shrugged. "On and off. Broke up for a while in college, again for a few months after. But from the way things keep going... it looks like we're stuck together."

You could tell from his tone that Puck didn't think that was a bad thing.

The conversation moved on. As promised, Grady, Harry and Roger told the (infamous) story of the roofing tile competition while Doug remained staunchly silent. It might not have been embarrassment keeping him quiet though. Something about Puck's story had made Doug very uncomfortable, to the point where he wasn't sure he wanted to spend an afternoon chatting with the younger man. Maybe, he mused, it was the way Puck had talked about the Lima killings as if they were some kind of in-joke instead of a real crime. Like a minor inconvenience, and not news that had once been broadcast across the nation.

Doug looked back over his shoulder to where his wife was laughing with Kurt like they were old friends. He wasn't sure he liked the implication that the couple had actually gotten together based on a lack of worry.

.

* * *

.

When Kurt came home to find that the widescreen TV had been moved to the bedroom and was currently connected up to a handheld video camera he was expecting a rather different surprise than the one he actually got. The bedroom curtains were closed, blocking out most of the light from the slowly sinking sun. He could hear the shower going through the door that joined bedroom to bathroom, and peeked in through the open door for a glance at the vague shape of his boyfriend's body through the frosted glass of the shower stall. Silent as a mouse, Kurt stepped back from the door and checked the bed, lifting the pillows to see the travel-sized bottle of lube that had been placed there for convenience.

Kurt pursed his lips, crossed his arms, and then raised a hand to press a finger to his lips. He eyed the TV thoughtfully. A few seconds later he started undressing, having decided that whatever Puck planned to do with that video camera was fine by him. They'd done kinkier things in the past, and doubtless they'd do kinkier things in the future. If Puck wanted to make a film then Kurt wasn't going to say no.

He stripped off slowly, taking the time to put everything where it belonged – dirty clothes in the laundry basket, belt hung up alongside the others in the closet, shoes placed neatly beside his other work-related footwear. When he was finally completely naked he crawled onto the bed and lay down on his back, arranged into a casual pose, ankles crossed, back propped by two fluffy pillows.

He was rewarded for his patience two minutes later when Puck stepped out of the bathroom dressed in nothing but a towel, which was quickly dropped to the floor when he saw Kurt. Puck leaned over the bed, weight braced on a knee against the mattress, to kiss the other man. His mouth tasted like toothpaste, Kurt noted, and he smelled like the lemongrass-scented shower gel he used to insist wasn't masculine enough. Kurt smiled against Puck's lips and raised his hands to slide his palms over the other man's biceps.

"Were you planning something dirty, Noah?" Kurt teased when they parted. "Something disgusting and kinky?"

"It's a surprise," Puck replied, smirking. "I think you'll like it." He drew away from the bed and crossed the room to turn the TV on. "You might wanna be on your hands and knees for this one, baby."

Curious, Kurt rolled onto his hands and knees facing the screen even as he arched an eyebrow. "Taking charge tonight, darling? You know I love it when you give it to me rough."

"I think you'll be too busy watching," Puck grinned, and flicked to the right channel to hook up the camera properly, "to do more than take it. And love it." He pressed the play button on the camera. "Surprise, baby."

For the first second there was nothing but static, then the screen lit up with a night-vision grey image of the outside of a building. Kurt frowned, perplexed rather than turned on, and was about to ask where Puck had gotten the mistaken impression that he found bad architecture arousing when the picture wobbled, then panned around to focus on what was obviously the back of Puck's ute.

Kurt's breath caught as it suddenly became obvious what exactly the surprise was. There was a lump crumpled in the truck bed and hidden by the ever-trusty tarp. He was almost certain that the hint of something poking out from underneath was a shoe.

"Noah..." Kurt started, looking at his boyfriend.

"Watch the screen," Puck told him and crossed the room to crawl up onto the bed behind Kurt. His hands caressed Kurt's back, down to his ass, to his thighs, and back up again. "I have to smash the disc after this," he added, and bent to kiss the small of Kurt's back, "so enjoy it while you can."

Kurt spread his legs apart further, widening his stance on the bed. He watched the screen avidly as the picture advanced shakily and one of Puck's hands came into view. The hand was covered in a dark, matte glove but Kurt still recognised the way it moved. He knew that hand as well as he knew his own. The hand was followed by a flash of a forearm covered by soft, plain coloured material. Glove touched plastic and the tarp was thrown back to reveal the dishevelled, gagged and groggy form of a man. Number two on the List, bound with black zip ties, the duct tape over his mouth wrapped at least twice around his head.

"Oh God," Kurt breathed as his lover's fingers started exploring his body, slipping between his legs to tease his cock. "Noah... Is he still...? Are you going to...?"

"Yeah," Puck replied, voice low and husky. "I got everything. Every single second for you to watch."

The picture shook, then settled as the camera was set down somewhere still and sturdy. The semi-unconscious Harold Dwyer was dragged up and out of the truck bed; the camera was picked up again half a second later. His mind automatically filling in the blanks, Kurt figured that Puck must have been carrying the man over one shoulder, the camera in his other hand. The landscape remained grey, with a soundtrack of heavy footsteps crunching against gravel and dry leaves. A glimpse of a steel cap boot as Puck kicked in an unlocked door, the unlocked chain attached to the handle clinked and rattled. A thud as the door closed again.

Mr. Dwyer was dumped unceremoniously to the ground, where he gave a whimpering moan of pain. The camera was set down on something about two feet off the ground and left, focussed on the man twitching on the floor.

Kurt twitched on the bed as his lover's hands caressed him again, this time covered in something slick and warm that tingled against his skin. Callused fingers rubbed the lubricant over his skin, fingertips pressed teasingly close to his entrance.

The muffled sounds from the television speakers were metallic, then the sound of footsteps. The picture suddenly flicked to colour, and Kurt got to see the smudges of red already dotting Dwyer's rumpled suit. Puck came back into the frame, dressed in worn jeans, a grey hoodie, and the black gloves that Kurt had come to associate with both sex and crime. The hood on the shirt kept most of Puck's face hidden even when his back wasn't turned away from the camera. He held a black-handled knife in his right hand. He used the butt of it to smash against Dwyer's mouth, breaking teeth.

Kurt groaned as a finger pushed into his body. He canted his hips back, hot all over and breathing hard already. He could feel Puck looming up behind him, a shadow of heat and weight that touched the passion in Kurt's chest and coiled around his heart – gripping his heart the way Puck's hand gripped his cock. They were a perfect fit, he thought and squirmed when that one finger became two. They were made for each other.

He had no idea how Puck had managed to draw everything out for a half hour of film, but somehow he managed it. The timing was perfect, every move perfectly choreographed so that even if the tape somehow made its way into the wrong hands there was no solid evidence that he was the killer. A flash of tan skin could be anyone. The truck, licence plates carefully kept out of the frame, could belong to anyone.

Kurt writhed on the bed under his boyfriend's careful attention and was shaking, nearly in tears, by the time the footage ended. The way his body moved, the look on his face, made it very clear that he loved every second.

The only thing that could have made it better was if Puck had brought out the knife, and if it was still bloody.

Afterwards he lay exhausted and panting, not even caring that he had collapsed into the wet patch or that the bedspread would need to be washed. He didn't lift his head when he felt Puck leave him and get up from the bed. "You'll be the death of me," Kurt muttered, sleepy and content.

The TV flicked off. Puck unhooked the camera and took out the disc, which he promptly snapped in half and again into quarters before he dropped it on top of the dresser. He returned to the bed and lay down beside his lover. "So," he said casually. "Order in...?"

"Mm," Kurt hummed. "Chinese."

Everything else could wait.


	6. Chapter 6

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 3116  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: You're going to get slices of two very different pies. And, as it turns out, this story is less sexually explicit than the first. Go figure.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

.

* * *

.

"Designé has finished their internal restructuring," Kurt stated over the breakfast table, thoughtfully tapping his fingers against the rim of his coffee cup. He was summarising a filler article that had shown up on the twentieth page of the Sunday news, adding in information that he knew from office gossip at Studio Six. "Mr. Cripley stepped down as director, replaced by Agatha Mercer – who is as fabulous as she is uncompromising. Her position was filled internally, leaving an opening for Martin Longreach to leave Studio Six for a higher paid position. He's still on his two weeks notice."

"And Dwyer fits where?" Puck asked, crunching on toast. "If you say 'in a body bag' I'll hurt you."

"No you won't." Kurt folds up the paper and picks up his coffee instead. He takes a sip before he explains. "Harold Dwyer was an administration clerk at a company that owns and organises the events in the John Robbins Exhibition Centre. When he doesn't show up to work on Monday his paperwork will remain unfinished and the space he was meant to have confirmed will remain open."

"So you want Six to take that spot." Puck raised an eyebrow. "Ok. I got it. There's some big convention thing going on and you want to be sent along to show off your stuff, right?"

"Exactly."

"But you don't even know that Studio Six is going to get that free spot."

"Yes I do." Kurt smiled sweetly. "I submitted the application and payment myself. And if questioned, I'll call it 'initiative'."

Puck stared at his boyfriend for a moment, then started laughing. "You're such an evil fucking genius."

"I know." Kurt sipped his coffee. "But I couldn't do any of it without my faithful minion," he adds teasingly, knowing exactly what reaction he was going to get.

"Suck it, Kurt."

.

* * *

.

Cristina Allen was in her twenties, highly qualified, and currently employed by a small, competitor company. She was bottle-blonde, fashionably thin, and ascribed to the 'higher the heel, greater the influence' rule. She'd managed to kick him in the leg while he was dragging her further out of sight into the alleyway and her stiletto heels had hurt like a bitch. Puck had retaliated by slamming her forward and downwards so her head caught on the edge of a dumpster. Skull had met metal with a hollow clang and Cristina's movements became suddenly sluggish.

He wiped the blood off the metal with his sleeve and hoisted her up so the cut wouldn't drip to the ground. His shirt would be a goner after this, he mused, but it was either that or leaving some type A behind.

The truck was parked out of sight in a loading bay that was only used on Saturday mornings and out of view from any of the nearby windows. Bar one, which belonged to a kebab shop that closed early on Tuesdays. Puck had picked the location both for convenience and for stealth. He'd watched the place for a full month, figuring out the exact right time and place to grab the girl while Kurt nagged him about ever-shrinking time windows.

"I'll get it done," Puck had said numerous times into the phone, with Kurt anxious and impatient on the other end of the line. "Keep your panties on."

He was getting it done now.

Puck dumped Cristina in the back of the ute where the tarp was already spread and pulled out a couple of zip ties from his hoodie. He tied her wrists together, and then her ankles. Stuffed a rag into her mouth (it didn't matter if she died on the way to the dump site he had in mind) and popped off her stilettos just to be sure. He rolled up the tarp with the efficient ease of practice and jack-knifed the whole thing into position near the cab. A couple of milk-crates full of six-packs of beer were shoved into the back alongside the rolled-up and immobile woman.

It was camouflage that he could later get pissed on. Puck thought it was a fucking brilliant idea.

Cristina Allen was the most likely competition that Kurt would have for a job that was not yet available with a company that was neither Studio Six nor Designe. Puck thought that his boyfriend was either a certified evil genius or completely freaking insane. He didn't really care either way, and just hoped that Kurt's horrifically detailed plans worked out. Otherwise it wouldn't be any of these poor dead bastards who'd suffer the fits of pouting and whining and bitchiness.

"You do not know how fucking lucky you are," Puck said to the rear view mirror, and the hidden woman in the back.

She probably didn't feel too lucky right about then, as Puck discovered when he later unrolled the tarp on the dirt he intended to make her last resting place. The woman's face was pale, her eyes wide and red with popped vessels. The rag he'd shoved in her mouth was further in than he'd thought, and when he checked for a pulse he found nothing.

He slit into her carotid anyway, just to be sure. Better safe than sorry after all.

Puck went through the motions of a familiar task, one eye always on the surrounding area and both ears alert for any sound. If he figured right then the body wouldn't be found for at least a couple of weeks, and if he did the smart thing and smashed most of her teeth in it might take them longer than that to figure out who she was. One day, he thought to himself as he did the hard work with the handle of his hunting knife, he was going to try this with pliers.

He left her there, buried in a shallow grave in one of the few secluded areas he could find. The loose soil would either shift or compact in time.

When Puck got home Kurt was waiting for him in the living room. Puck nodded to him, then took his stained shirt to the bathroom to burn. He washed away the gritty black ash to the sound of his boyfriend singing showtunes.

.

* * *

.

The article was several pages in, bumped from the front to make room for neutral-right politics. It was barely two paragraphs, just a short statement that police were looking for witnesses who might have seen anything suspicious on the 5th in conjunction with the suspected disappearance of 27 year old Cristina Allen. There was a small portrait photo of the woman next to the piece, with the caption 'Cristina Allen, missing since Thursday'.

There was no mention of disturbances, no mention of anything suspicious. In fact, if anything, the lack of attention given to the article made it seem as though whoever had written it thought it was a waste of time. A filler piece. Clearly Cristina had just had an identity crisis and left town to find herself, or whatever it was women her age in her salary bracket did.

Puck folded up the newspaper and dumped it in the trash. He had a long weekend with an RDO on Monday and he planned to enjoy it. Starting by going back to bed. 8am was way too early to be awake on a Sunday.

.

* * *

.

The only reason Doug happened to see it was due to the damned head cold he'd been suffering through the past two days. After struggling to wade through all of the usual guff at work he had finally decided to take a day off so he could sit in bed reading and recuperating. Marcie had come in just twenty minutes ago to tell him that she was off to do the grocery shopping.

"I'll pick you up some of that honey-lemon throat mix," she promised, kissed him on the forehead, and left.

Doug had continued reading until he became too restless to stay in bed any longer. He had just stood up when he noticed a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. If he'd waited just two minutes longer he wouldn't have noticed a thing. He wouldn't have caught the movement and automatically turned to see what it was. Which meant he wouldn't have seen Puck from next door carrying a dirty shovel in one hand, and a large jug of bleach in the other. He wouldn't have seen the other man disappear into the tiny shed out back for just a second, then return and walk straight to the back of his ute to retrieve a stained and dirty tarp and a blood-soaked grey hoodie.

He could pass off the sudden strange feeling of unease on his cold.

He couldn't find as good an explanation for why he stood by the window and squinted out into 56's back yard to try and see through the dirty garden shed window. After a few seconds of nothing he saw a shadow that might have been the other man, then nothing again. Doug waited for a full ten minutes before he sat down on the bed again. It was another ten before Puck emerged, carrying nothing with him. The younger man trekked to the ute again, leaned down to pick up something from the truck bed, and Doug would swear he saw a flash of something shiny before Puck tucked it out of sight.

Doug told himself he had to be hallucinating. It was the cold, and nothing more than uncharitable paranoia. He had not seen his next door neighbour tuck a hunting knife into his jeans after having dragged a dirty shovel and a bloodstained shirt into his shed.

.

* * *

.

It was another month before the job actually opened up. Two weeks that Puck spent planning, while Kurt hovered in the background in nervous excitement. And then two weeks of an obligatory mourning period before the company felt it was appropriate to advertise. Kurt was giddy all morning. He floated into work and back out again to take lunch down the road at a trendy little cafe. He sat at a table in the back, alone, and ordered '_the largest piece of chocolate cake you have, and champagne, I'm celebrating'_. He waited for his drink to be served before he whipped out his phone and dialled the number of his closest friend in the city.

"Marcie!" Kurt greeted the woman enthusiastically when she picked up. "Please bear with me, I know I sound like I'm on speed at the moment, but I'm just so happy, I have to tell someone about this or I'll explode!"

Marcia had been washing dishes when the phone rang, and had paused for a moment to wipe her hands off on a tea towel before she answered. She stood leaning against the kitchen counter, momentarily stunned by her friend's gushing.

"What?" Marcia asked, briefly struck by the impossible and ridiculous thought that Kurt was about to tell her that he was having a baby. It was a passing thought, and was shoved aside almost instantly by the infectious nature of her friend's enthusiasm. "What is it? What happened? Is it something to do with Noah?" Another thought occurred and Marcia gasped; "Did he ask you to marry him!"

"No," Kurt replied, laughing at the idea. He paused to sip his champagne and leaned back in his chair. "In fact, don't tell him this, but this news may be even better. You see, I have a job interview tomorrow with the one and only Runway magazine. And if –" he meant when "– I get the job it will be a significant pay rise and only a few small steps away from my dream career!"

"Oh, hun, that's marvellous!" Marcia exclaimed, though she'd had no idea that Kurt was looking for a new job. "What's the position?"

"Assistant Design Editor," Kurt said breezily, "it's basically what I do now, but for a magazine instead of people's houses."

"Well I'm really happy for you. We'll have to get everyone over to celebrate if you get it."

"Fingers crossed for me," Kurt said, smiling sweetly as he spoke. He'd already knocked out the important competition. He was already shortlisted or he wouldn't even have an interview. And on the off chance that he didn't hit it off with the interviewers he'd simply find ways to remove the other competition. He was in no way worried about that though. Kurt was the best out of a long list of applicants, and on top of that he was young and fashion-savvy.

He would have his cake and he would eat it too.


	7. Chapter 7

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 3116  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: One more chapter left after this one. I'm happy to take bets on how you think it's going to end.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

.

* * *

.

The disappearance of Cassandra Stoker was much more highly publicised than any of the disappearances before her. She was a design editor for a fashion magazine, did a lot of charity work. She was a local C-list celebrity and so her disappearance was considered big news. According to the papers it took them three days before anyone thought to go to her house to check if she was Ok. The house had been empty; all of her ID, her money, her keys still on the table and signs of a break in. Glass panel in the back door broken, nothing stolen, and a tiny smear of blood in the hallway.

Stoker was put on the depressingly large list of 'missing, presumed dead'. Another state statistic.

What really stuck out for Doug was the date. 16th, the day before he had been home sick. The day he'd seen Puck take bleach and a bloodstained shirt to the shed. Paranoia seemed like a fitting addend to his growing list of neuroses. Former alcoholic becomes obsessed with the idea that his next door neighbour may be a murderer. He had nothing to go on but a sense of foreboding and a dirty shovel.

"Do you ever think there's something not quite right about Puck?" he asked Marcia after putting Braedon to bed.

"Noah?" Marcia asked, hands on her hips. "Really, hun?"

Doug saw the twitch of her lips and knew what she was thinking. "Not like that. I mean in a... dangerous way?"

"He seems find to me," Marcia replied. "He's quiet, but he's friendly enough. He's wrapped all the way around Kurt's little finger, that's for sure."

Doug frowned and looked out the window at the curtains hanging in 56's windows. Lit up from the inside the brown glow was like liquid chocolate. Wholly innocent, seductive in its suburban sweetness. It disturbed him and he didn't know why.

"I know that look," Marcia interrupted his thoughts, snapping their own curtains firmly shut. "Doug, honey. I love you to pieces but you are such an old-fashioned heterosexual male. I think you have a problem Noah because he defies stereotype. Noah is a normal, hard-working man. A tradesman. A man who chugs beer and doesn't know mauve from taupe, and it bugs you that he's not what you expect from a gay man."

Doug didn't try to correct his wife. He had the feeling that telling her he suspected their neighbour of murder wouldn't go down any better than the idea that he disliked Puck because the other man made him feel uncomfortable. Sexuality had nothing to do with it, he thought. The strange feeling he had about Noah Puckerman was not seated next to the knowledge that he was gay.

Doug kept quiet and conceded the point to his wife. He let her have the victory and her peace of mind. It wasn't until he was at work the next day that he started researching.

He started with the Lima killings, which would have happened around the time that Puck was sixteen or seventeen. Six boys missing, two bodies recovered a few weeks after their disappearance, three found in the months following, and one that wasn't discovered until new building developments unearthed the heavily decomposed body over a year later. Each boy – each victim – was identified by the same parameters. They were between sixteen and eighteen years old, played either football or hockey, were all over five-ten and as built as a teenage frame allowed. And, unofficially, were described as being difficult or aggressive. High school bullies.

The McKinley High yearbooks had made it online two years ago, though they'd only been scanned back to 2004 so far. Doug looked up 2009 and searched through the scanned, graffitied pages for the student photos. The victims all had the same kind of look, and the same sorts of activities listed underneath their names. They played sport throughout the entire school year, swapping over to something else when the season ended, and had practically no other extracurriculars listed. They all had the same kind of look too, the kind that reminded him uncomfortably of being shoved into lockers and hassled for liking math more than sport.

Doug hesitated, then looked for Puckerman. The first thing he noticed was that the page, like others before it, had been scribbled on in black marker. Most of the slurs had been thoughtfully blurred out by whoever had uploaded the images, but Doug could make out one or two. 'Loser' was scrawled across the bottom of Puck's yearbook photo, obscuring most of the three listed extracurricular activities. Only the beginning of football was recognisable, and the tail end of a word that ended in 'ections'.

Doug looked up 2010, the year after the disappearances. The black scrawls and graffiti that had marked the previous year were nowhere to be found. The graffiti had disappeared with the dead boys, leaving every page clean and readable. Or almost every page. Under the name Noah Puckerman the list of 'Football, Basketball, New Directions' had been added to in neat, precise handwriting. One word; '_Clyde'_, and a nearly perfect love heart.

An odd feeling curled tight in Doug's chest, like a cold iron vice that made it hard to breathe. He looked for Kurt Hummel. A superior smile stared at him from the middle of a page full of awkward or bored teens. Under the list 'Cheerios, French Club, New Directions' the name '_Bonnie_' was scrawled in a messy script. Doug shut the browser, feeling twice as paranoid as he had before.

The reality of it didn't really sink in until Doug found out about Kurt's new job. He was still twitching with the nervous energy of paranoia, stealing glances at 56 (and the big white ute when it was parked in the driveway) and attempting to hide it all from his wife. He wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to what Marcia was saying until the words 'design editor for Runway' popped out of her mouth.

For some reason the phrase seemed familiar. Way too familiar to just be plain old déjà vu.

It took him a moment or two before he pegged it. Cassandra Stoker had been the former design editor of Runway magazine. Stoker, who disappeared the day before Doug had seen his neighbour with a bloodstained shirt and who's death conveniently opened up a place for Puck's boyfriend in the magazine. _Holy shit_, Doug thought, all of the circumstantial evidence clicking right into place. _My neighbour is a murderer_!

.

* * *

.

Neither Phil Constance nor Edgar Bateman were on the List, and as far as Puck knew neither of them deserved to die. The truth was they were convenient. It wasn't actually that hard for a guy like him to make sure everything was in place like it should be.

Puck timed it as perfectly as he could and came home early on Saturday afternoon. He parked his truck in front of the house, leaving the dirty shovel behind in the back. The sleeve of his shirt was stained in tacky, drying blood. He caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye as he disappeared into the house.

The only thing he had to do after that was sit back and wait.

He threw the shirt into the laundry hamper.

The police came knocking at quarter past seven, pretty much just as soon as Kurt announced that dinner was done. They knocked on the door politely enough but would not be swayed from coming inside the house to 'ask a few questions'. Puck kept a straight face through it all. He answered all of the questions honestly, knowing that despite the law of 'innocent until proven guilty' a lot of police stuck with the opposite theory. On paper you were innocent until proven guilty. In real life you were guilty until proven innocent.

Kurt fussed and hovered in the background, hackles raised and puffed up like a show dog with a bad temper. Puck couldn't reassure him without looking horribly suspicious. The less Kurt knew, the better. As good an actor as the other man was, there was a note of panic in his eyes that couldn't be faked. Puck thought it gave the whole thing a really nice touch.

Especially when the question "do you mind if we take a look around" yielded a bloodstained shirt, a pair of dirty, blood-smeared work gloves, and a shovel with a smear of blood on the handle. That was when the switch clicked firmly towards 'guilty'.

"It's my blood," Puck protested. He stood up, the dining chair he'd been sitting in skidded back several inches. He made sure to make it sound like a lie when he said; "I don't know what happened to Phil, but I didn't have anything to do with it!"

He was in handcuffs within the hour, Kurt shrilly threatening lawyers in the background as Puck was led out to the police cruiser. He glanced at the neighbour's house as the car engine started and saw Doug's face in the window. Puck didn't stop himself from smirking.

A smirk would only help what he was trying to do here.

At the station Puck was cooperative and went through the motions without complaint. He quietly allowed himself to be searched, then fingerprinted, and answered all questions with the same blunt honesty he'd demonstrated at the house. It was all the same questions anyway, phrased in a different manner. They all amounted to the same thing, and even the stupidest man alive knew not to actually confess to murder.

By the time he actually got to a holding cell he was feeling pretty confident. They'd already found the bandage on his forearm, and these days lab work could be pushed through pretty quick. Hands uncuffed, Puck sat down in the holding cell and smiled to himself. He really should have asked to call Kurt and tell him to calm down, but he didn't want to be caught saying anything that might come off as suspicious.

Instead he told the cop that swung by not to bother with any lawyers.

"I'm totally innocent," he said plainly, a barefaced lie that sounded like truth, "sooner or later it'll be proven and I'll be a hundred percent off the hook."

He got a sceptical look in return.

The next morning, as soon as the station was officially open for business, one very pissed off designer was stalking through the front doors and demanding to speak to his partner. Puck could hear his voice all the way from the holding cells and had to smile. There was a shrill note in Kurt's voice that was normally nowhere to be found. He was genuinely worried, and possibly thinking of doing something stupid to make sure Puck didn't gain a conviction. It took only four minutes (Puck was counting) for Kurt to badger his way into a visit.

Kurt looked furious. He glared at Puck through the bars of the cell, standing with his hands on his hips. "Just what the hell," he hissed, "did you think you were doing?"

Puck leaned against the open bars of the cell and smiled at Kurt. "I didn't do anything," he replied, "it was Ed."

"Don't give me that false-innocence," Kurt snapped, clearly forgetting they had an audience, "I can see deep shit when you step in it, you lousy... ratweasel!"

"I'm serious. It was Ed Bateman. I'd bet anything."

"You mean to tell me you had nothing to do with...!" Kurt's eyes widened suddenly, and he blinked. He gave Puck an odd look, grey-blue eyes flicking down to the bandage on Puck's forearm. "Oh."

"With me now, Princess?"

"I'm getting you a lawyer," Kurt announced. "Don't argue," he added, in a tone that meant Puck would be exiled to the couch for months if he disagreed. Kurt leaned forward and pecked his lips in a quick kiss. "I need to get to work. I'll make sure that lawyer shows up as soon as possible."

Puck nodded, knowing it was useless to argue.

"I am not," Kurt finished imperiously, "happy with you."

Puck didn't get to hear the case that was being made against him, based on the purely circumstantial evidence he had left for them to find. He heard about an hour after Kurt had left that his ute had been claimed for forensics and a team was currently going over the truck from top to bottom. Puck just hoped they didn't toss or confiscate anything from the glove box. It was all paperwork, including his registration and insurance. He already knew they wouldn't find anything.

His lawyer showed up around lunchtime. A sharp-looking woman dressed in a tailored pantsuit that Kurt would definitely approve of. (God, he hoped Kurt hadn't hired her based purely on her wardrobe.) The woman introduced herself as Patricia Roth and before he knew it Puck had been bundled into a private room to discuss things with his lawyer.

"So I'm totally innocent," Puck said straight away, impressed when her mouth tightened a little to indicate that she'd caught the lie. "In the sense that they won't find anything," Puck clarified, "in my truck, or wherever that shit with Phil went down. The blood's mine, the dirt's from work, and anyone'll tell you I got on fine with Phil."

"Even so," Patricia told him, a hint of disapproval hovering somewhere around the corners of her mouth, "the lab work won't be back for another two weeks. Until then the only evidence of your innocence in existence happens to be your word."

"Same as any innocent man would say." He pointed it out with a smirk. "Story goes like this," Puck said, "last I saw of him, Phil was just fine. We clocked off at the same time the day before he disappeared, I went home to my partner, got a good night's sleep, and the next day at work Phil wasn't there. I assumed he was out sick and so did everyone else. Then just after lunch I cut myself on a bit of pipe, bled on my shirt pretty bad before I got to the office for some first aid. I went home early, next thing I know there are cops in my front yard and I'm getting asked all sorts of questions about how well I know Phil Constance."

Patricia narrowed her eyes at him, the crow's feet in the corners crinkling. She did not look impressed. She took a breath, folded her hands on top of the table between them and said; "If you're lying to me, Mr. Puckerman, you'd best come clean right now. I'm not obligated to pass on anything you might tell me, but the only way I can defend you to the best of my ability is to know everything right from the start."

"The blood's going to be mine," Puck stated again, and pulled back the sleeve of his shirt to show her the bandage still on his forearm. "I just want to know how long it's going to be before I can go home."

"You have a couple of very long days ahead of you," Patricia told him, seeming to have accepted that Puck's story wasn't going to change. "You'll go through at least two more rounds of questioning, which I can sit in on to make sure nobody steps out of line. You'll also have a bail hearing within the next week, during which a judge will decide whether or not you're a flight risk and if you should be given the opportunity to pay your way out of a stay at the county jail while the evidence against you is processed and the case presented. If – and yes, I do mean if –"

Puck gave her a wounded look, as if he were truly offended that she didn't believe in his innocence.

"If," Patricia reiterated, "the evidence doesn't pan out, you'll be free to go. You'll receive no compensation for your lost time or any emotional distress you may have gone through. The best you can hope for is a formal letter of apology."

"But none of this will go on my record, right? It won't say I was arrested?"

"It will say you were detained and questioned," Patricia clarified, "but that you were not guilty."

Puck nodded. That was what he wanted to know. There were only two other questions he wanted to ask, but he set them aside in favour of something more practical. "How long until this bail hearing thing?"

He didn't think it would be smart to say the other two aloud. How long would it be until they found Phil's blood in Ed Bateman's truck, alongside the murder weapon? And how long would it be until he could go home and rub all of this into his neighbour's face?


	8. Chapter 8

**Title**: Suburban Trash  
**Rating**: R  
**Character(s)/Pairing(s)**: Puck/Kurt, OCs  
**Genre**: Drama.  
**Word Count**: 1682  
**Warning**: Sex, swearing, sometimes-graphic violence. Possible OOCness.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own it and I'm not making any money from it, this is pure entertainment and not intended to offend.  
**Author Notes**: This is the last one, duckies.  
**Summary**: Kurt has this plan for how his life is meant to turn out. This plan includes very specific ideas of what he should be doing, and where he should be living, and who should conveniently die.

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* * *

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As it turned out, Puck didn't have to wait that long. The investigation didn't slow to a standstill while the lab processed the blood and forensic 'evidence' from Puck's ute, there were still interviews going on, still theories being passed around. Puck was granted bail at a ridiculous price that he told Kurt not to even bother paying, and was moved to the county courthouse pending presentation of evidence at his trial, which was dated for two months down the line. Puck was pretty confident he wouldn't get to that point. After all, he hadn't done it.

Soon enough the oddities started showing up, poking tiny little holes in their case against him. Puck's alibi (that he was home with his boyfriend) was about as airtight as a colander. But numerous people convinced of Kurt's honest charm swore up and down that he'd never lie, especially about something so serious. Puck got along well with his workmates, and even with his bosses. He had never fought with Phil, not even over anything as trivial as sports. Puck had no violent history and no prior arrests – just a few speeding tickets and a couple of noise nuisance warnings. He was cooperative, never changed his story no matter how many times they asked him or what 'new evidence' was uncovered.

He knew they were getting desperate when they dragged him into an interview room for a grim-faced detective to tell him that they had uncovered video surveillance footage that placed him at the scene of the crime. Puck knew full well there was no such thing and reacted accordingly with that it must be a mistake. He scoped out his locations far too well to have missed any security cameras.

Then Ed Bateman found a bloody knife in the back of his van and flipped the fuck out, and Puck was well on his way to freedom again. He had been counting on Ed's unfailing belief in the justice system and it had come through, exactly as planned. The guy actually called the police, the second they showed up it became pretty clear that they suddenly had more evidence on Bateman than they did on Puck.

A bloody knife with Bateman's fingerprints, some suspicious speckles of blood (and some saliva, Puck was pretty creative when he wanted to be) in the back, a hank of the same type of rope used to bind the victim, and Puck had even been thoughtful enough to leave a couple of scraps of Phil's shirt partially hidden under a crate of gear that Ed never moved. On top of all that Ed was also known for having a temper. And, score one for convenience, he had no way of proving that he wasn't just at home alone like he claimed.

Suddenly Patricia stopped looking at him as thought she thought he was lying.

Three days later, almost two weeks after Puck had initially been arrested, the lab work came back. The blood, as he'd been telling everyone from the start, was his. The dirt in his car was from the work site. There was no sign that he'd had anything to do with Phil's death.

"So how about that letter of apology?" Puck asked his lawyer during their final consultation.

Patricia didn't look too hopeful. "You should just feel lucky they found the real killer, or you might still be looking at another few weeks in county."

"As long as this isn't on my record."

Puck left with a smirk on his face and a set of papers saying he was a free man. He made his way home on his own steam, in time to catch Kurt coming home from work. Puck grinned. "Miss me, baby?"

Kurt slapped him full across the mouth.

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* * *

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It was the 'how dare you' that caught people's attention. A shrill, furious yell that carried half way down the block in either direction. Kurt Hummel's voice in livid hysteria, becoming even louder with each new word; "How dare you scare me like that!"

Marcia had the porch light on within seconds. The flood of light illuminated two people standing outside 56's front door, and the sight made Doug's spine turn to ice. Noah Puckerman stood in profile to the porch light, large as life and definitely not in any kind of legal trouble. To Doug's eye he looked like a con – a man who should be behind bars but had somehow managed to weasel his way out of the punishment he deserved. A man he didn't want anywhere near his children, or even his neighbourhood.

Whatever reply Puck gave was too quiet to carry the same distance that Kurt's had, but it earned him a slap that reverberated in the street like a gunshot. Puck's head had snapped to the side with the force and he obviously let it stay that way until his partner finally opened the door and stormed inside. Then Doug would swear that the younger man looked up, right at him, and smirked.

Doug stepped away from the window. He didn't see Puck disappear inside, though he could hear it when 56's door slammed shut on an empty front yard.

"What do you think that was about?" Marcia asked.

Doug didn't want to reply. He had a feeling he knew exactly what it had been about.

His theory was proved right the next morning.

The doorbell rang at exactly eight o'clock, ten minutes before Doug was due to leave for work. He answered it with trepidation, only to blanch when he saw who was standing on the stoop. Puck, dressed down and casual in jeans and a t-shirt, arms crossed loosely in front of him. "Can I come in," he said, not really a question. "I don't think you want me saying this where anyone could hear."

Doug stepped aside without saying anything, irrational fear making him worry that the kids were still home and not due to leave for school for another half hour. Puck wouldn't – couldn't – do anything to them, even if he was the Lima killer. It wouldn't make any sense. "Can I get you a coffee?" Doug asked, using the same polite tone he reserved for the most annoying persons he dealt with at work.

Puck shook his head. "No thanks," he said. And then, getting straight to the point; "I know you called in the tip."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I was arrested thanks to an anonymous tip," Puck elaborated. "And it took them almost two weeks to figure out that the blood was mine and it's totally normal for a builder to carry around a shovel in his truck."

Dry mouthed, Doug replied; "I didn't call in any tips."

"Yeah, we both know you're lying." Puck smiled. It was a small, humourless smile that made Doug wish he hadn't opened the door. "But that's cool. It means you're smart enough not to admit aloud that you actually thought I murdered someone. I hear accusations of murder are pretty bad for friendships."

"I can only imagine," Doug said, aware that they were having a slightly different conversation now than the one that was happening aloud. "I've never accused any friends of murder."

"I don't kill people," Puck stated coolly.

Doug couldn't explain the chill he got down his spine. "Good."

"I just thought I'd let you know. No hard feelings."

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* * *

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Puck slept on the couch for two nights before he managed to catch up to Kurt long enough to explain himself without the risk of being bitchslapped. If only because he managed to grab Kurt around the waist and pin his arms to his sides before he could pull one back to strike. "Listen," Puck started, and had to avoid a half-hearted head butt. "Listen, you stupid bitch."

"What if they'd caught you?" Kurt replied in a hiss, clearly still in a snit. "What if they'd actually found some sort of evidence?"

"I told you," Puck repeated, for what felt like the hundredth time, "I took care of it. I knew what I was doing."

"You didn't tell me!"

"You would've thrown a fit and tried to stop me," Puck replied sensibly. He tightened his grip on his partner, threatening bruises. "Don't make me hurt you, baby. I'm sick of this pissy bullshit. Now listen." He waited for Kurt to stop struggling before he continued; "The middle-aged douchebag next door was getting suspicious and I don't like scrutiny. If I didn't do something he'd keep spying, prying, and being an annoying prick. So I made him think I killed Phil."

"You did kill Phil," Kurt replied snippily.

"We know that. Nobody else does. Nobody else is gonna know."

"So you set up someone else to take the fall, knowing you'd still be arrested in the meantime and I'd be here at home worried sick, thinking you'd wind up in prison."

"I know," Puck soothed, pressing kisses to the side of his boyfriend's face, "I'm a bad man."

"If you had been convicted..."

"I'm not leaving you, Kurt."

Kurt sighed, the anger draining from his body. He slumped limply against Puck's chest. "You are the most frustrating, ridiculously annoying person I have ever met."

"I took photos," Puck said, easing up his grip so he was hugging the smaller man rather than keeping him immobile, "I hid the memory card in the lining of your bag."

Kurt was silent for a moment, considering this new piece of information. Free to move now, his arms slid up to wrap around Puck's neck. "I think we should go to the bedroom now," he stated serenely.

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* * *

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Kurt used his first four months wages from his new job at Runway to put a down payment on 56 Hartley Drive. It was a good neighbourhood with a nice wholesome feel to it, close enough to the city centre for a quick commute without losing its suburban charm. It was the kind of place you went if you wanted a nice place to raise a couple of kids.

The address looked great on his resume.


End file.
